Close, but no cigar.
Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 2:39 pm
When a few weeks ago FS16 was on sale I couldn't resist buying it after having played FS14 up to the point where the frustrations became stronger than the pleasures of the game. Unfortunately I have now (already) reached the same stage with FS16. And I reached it after a mere 5 days!!! I expect longer enjoyment from a game.
1. What is it with this extremely annoying limitation of 45 items of equipment in FS14 and 75 in FS16? It is THE most frustrating factor that is taking away 80% of my enjoyment of the game. I mean... even with 500 items of equipment in the database it would still be an extremely small effort to maintain for even the simplest phone or tablet. And rendering them can't really be a problem either because you will never have all of these items in view at the same time. You would use them spread around, all over the map. I can see no reason why this limitation should exist. So unless you can give me a good reason for it please increase this value to a number that would never become a limitation.
What good is earning game money when you can't use it to buy more equipment so you can farm the fields more efficiently? I don't want to keep spending lots of time driving equipment around and changing equipment hooked up to tractors. It's a Farming Simulator, NOT a Driving Simulator!
You want an equipment 'train' for each cluster of fields. Preferably for every two fields and eventually you could have one for every field if you would want that. You want a short time between harvest and sowing. To achieve that you want to use working in parallel if you want to do some forestry and baling too and want to keep the cows, sheep and slurry tanks 'fed'. A harvester (+ 2 headers?), then cultivating, fertilising, sowing, each done with it's own tractor, makes nine items. Plus a tipper with tractor stationed nearby to collect from the harvester and drop it off at the silos. That's 11 items. I had similar trains with all three meadows. Mower/tedder/windrower with three tractors and one baler for all fields but I had to sell most off to buy other equipment. I now have a tractor with mower at every field and only one tedder. Sold three windrowers (they are basically useless anyway) and two tedders and reassigned the tractors. I should have been able to buy extra balers so I could have one at every meadow. I ran into this limit when on top of the four central fields and three meadows I had bought the largest field.
Forestry: One Scorpion and two Buffalo's because they are slow when delivering to far away locations with best price (where they then regular get stuck (saw mill) - very annoying) plus a tractor with stump grinder. Five items.
Of course Pickups attached to the milk tank and wool wagon plus a personal 'command vehicle' with which to collect the bonus wagons or deliver products to buyers parallel to a worker with the truck when you have a large amount to deliver during Great Demands. That's three pickups plus a tipper that's always free for these personal deliveries. Four in total.
Plus three loader wagons with tractors. Two large ones to park over the unloading points at the stables to prolong the period before bales start to be used and one small one because the large ones get stuck with workers on two of the three meadows. Another six items.
A truck with loader and low-loader. Another three. I bought AND sold the dolly TWICE!
Since there is no place to store excess bales I use Autostacks for that. I ended up buying nine of those to store grass and straw bales when doing a baling run. Now I am forced to ask myself whether I should sell some again. I do not want to have to make such decisions that are only frustrating me. They ARE useful. They gradually get used and then I fill them again with another baling run.
And more... (for potatoes, sugar beets etc.)
I believe there are about 52 DIFFERENT items in the store. That alone should be an indication you need the possibility to buy MUCH more equipment than you can now.
So I repeat. Please make it possible to buy MUCH more equipment and lift this unnecessary and very frustrating barrier of 75 items in FS16 (and 45 in FS14).
2. The whole workers getting stuck thing. On fences/buildings/ponds/road vehicles/road barriers/fuel stations/fertiliser refill stations/car wash... just about everything. Unloading loader wagons at the plant or the sheep shed also mostly fails. It cannot be THAT difficult to fix. Just do us all a huge favour and FIX IT! It has been present for several YEARS now. If you fix it by improving the algorithm that moves the vehicles I expect you can use this fix in ALL versions of the games so it would seem a good use of development time. Frankly, games like this should never be released to market with such a huge 'bug' (or probably better called 'unfinished code') in them. Before I ran into the max equipment barrier this was the most frustrating 'feature' of the games. To alleviate such failed automation problems a GoTo function where you can simply tap on a destination location on the map would be a GREAT help. Please create it.
3. The UI. Why on earth did you remove the functionality of the small map to move through the map and switch focus on vehicles? It was a very effective and convenient way to switch vehicles and keep an eye on the status of fields. Switching vehicles was much better than now with the large map. Yes of course that large map is very useful too with it's expanded functionality but it's not best for everything. To switch vehicles the smaller slide-out map is superior by far. Please bring it back. I play on a 12 inch tablet and am left handed. Having to move my hand from the side of the tablet to the map or menu buttons so far to the right so frequently is quite inconvenient. Please offer alternative layouts (tablet!) to choose from or make it possible to freely rearrange the layout of these UI elements.
Switching vehicles by using the left/right buttons can be very convenient too but only when you still have few vehicles. As soon as you have more it becomes inefficient. Efficiency could be restored if we could reorder the sequence in which they are cycled through. A list of vehicles where we could drag them up and down in the list would give the opportunity to place vehicles in a logical order within the 'functional clusters' that you use in different areas of the map. Once you've switched to a vehicle in that group you can then use the left/right buttons to switch vehicles within that functional group.
There's one thing that I can do with FS16 that I can't with FS14. That is making a back-up with Helium/Carbon. If you spend over 100 hours on a game you want to safeguard all that time and effort. With FS14 I can't do that the way I want to.
Summarising:
1. Raise the limit of maximum number of equipment you can buy SIGNIFICANTLY! To 500 or so. So I can actually make some game PROGRESS again, which now I don't feel I can. Only five days after I bought the game I reached the 'Garage Full' stage.
2. Please just fix this #@$%&! getting stuck EVERYWHERE on EVERYTHING bug/unfinished code. It's about time wouldn't you agree? We've waited for it MORE than long enough. And give us a GoTo function.
3. Restore the functions of the small slide-out map, please make a reorderable vehicles list and provide better UI layout options.
4. Oh... and bring back the manual 'Save' option please as it exists in FS14. It IS very useful to have that function. Even better. Give us the possibility to save the game to a file on the device that can be loaded again and can be backed up.
5. Almost forgot. Please fix this 'Honk for collection' function with the harvesters. It is VERY erratic and doesn't work properly WAY too often.
So currently my verdict has to stand at: 'Close, but no cigar.' Please make me want to offer you that cigar.
1. What is it with this extremely annoying limitation of 45 items of equipment in FS14 and 75 in FS16? It is THE most frustrating factor that is taking away 80% of my enjoyment of the game. I mean... even with 500 items of equipment in the database it would still be an extremely small effort to maintain for even the simplest phone or tablet. And rendering them can't really be a problem either because you will never have all of these items in view at the same time. You would use them spread around, all over the map. I can see no reason why this limitation should exist. So unless you can give me a good reason for it please increase this value to a number that would never become a limitation.
What good is earning game money when you can't use it to buy more equipment so you can farm the fields more efficiently? I don't want to keep spending lots of time driving equipment around and changing equipment hooked up to tractors. It's a Farming Simulator, NOT a Driving Simulator!
You want an equipment 'train' for each cluster of fields. Preferably for every two fields and eventually you could have one for every field if you would want that. You want a short time between harvest and sowing. To achieve that you want to use working in parallel if you want to do some forestry and baling too and want to keep the cows, sheep and slurry tanks 'fed'. A harvester (+ 2 headers?), then cultivating, fertilising, sowing, each done with it's own tractor, makes nine items. Plus a tipper with tractor stationed nearby to collect from the harvester and drop it off at the silos. That's 11 items. I had similar trains with all three meadows. Mower/tedder/windrower with three tractors and one baler for all fields but I had to sell most off to buy other equipment. I now have a tractor with mower at every field and only one tedder. Sold three windrowers (they are basically useless anyway) and two tedders and reassigned the tractors. I should have been able to buy extra balers so I could have one at every meadow. I ran into this limit when on top of the four central fields and three meadows I had bought the largest field.
Forestry: One Scorpion and two Buffalo's because they are slow when delivering to far away locations with best price (where they then regular get stuck (saw mill) - very annoying) plus a tractor with stump grinder. Five items.
Of course Pickups attached to the milk tank and wool wagon plus a personal 'command vehicle' with which to collect the bonus wagons or deliver products to buyers parallel to a worker with the truck when you have a large amount to deliver during Great Demands. That's three pickups plus a tipper that's always free for these personal deliveries. Four in total.
Plus three loader wagons with tractors. Two large ones to park over the unloading points at the stables to prolong the period before bales start to be used and one small one because the large ones get stuck with workers on two of the three meadows. Another six items.
A truck with loader and low-loader. Another three. I bought AND sold the dolly TWICE!
Since there is no place to store excess bales I use Autostacks for that. I ended up buying nine of those to store grass and straw bales when doing a baling run. Now I am forced to ask myself whether I should sell some again. I do not want to have to make such decisions that are only frustrating me. They ARE useful. They gradually get used and then I fill them again with another baling run.
And more... (for potatoes, sugar beets etc.)
I believe there are about 52 DIFFERENT items in the store. That alone should be an indication you need the possibility to buy MUCH more equipment than you can now.
So I repeat. Please make it possible to buy MUCH more equipment and lift this unnecessary and very frustrating barrier of 75 items in FS16 (and 45 in FS14).
2. The whole workers getting stuck thing. On fences/buildings/ponds/road vehicles/road barriers/fuel stations/fertiliser refill stations/car wash... just about everything. Unloading loader wagons at the plant or the sheep shed also mostly fails. It cannot be THAT difficult to fix. Just do us all a huge favour and FIX IT! It has been present for several YEARS now. If you fix it by improving the algorithm that moves the vehicles I expect you can use this fix in ALL versions of the games so it would seem a good use of development time. Frankly, games like this should never be released to market with such a huge 'bug' (or probably better called 'unfinished code') in them. Before I ran into the max equipment barrier this was the most frustrating 'feature' of the games. To alleviate such failed automation problems a GoTo function where you can simply tap on a destination location on the map would be a GREAT help. Please create it.
3. The UI. Why on earth did you remove the functionality of the small map to move through the map and switch focus on vehicles? It was a very effective and convenient way to switch vehicles and keep an eye on the status of fields. Switching vehicles was much better than now with the large map. Yes of course that large map is very useful too with it's expanded functionality but it's not best for everything. To switch vehicles the smaller slide-out map is superior by far. Please bring it back. I play on a 12 inch tablet and am left handed. Having to move my hand from the side of the tablet to the map or menu buttons so far to the right so frequently is quite inconvenient. Please offer alternative layouts (tablet!) to choose from or make it possible to freely rearrange the layout of these UI elements.
Switching vehicles by using the left/right buttons can be very convenient too but only when you still have few vehicles. As soon as you have more it becomes inefficient. Efficiency could be restored if we could reorder the sequence in which they are cycled through. A list of vehicles where we could drag them up and down in the list would give the opportunity to place vehicles in a logical order within the 'functional clusters' that you use in different areas of the map. Once you've switched to a vehicle in that group you can then use the left/right buttons to switch vehicles within that functional group.
There's one thing that I can do with FS16 that I can't with FS14. That is making a back-up with Helium/Carbon. If you spend over 100 hours on a game you want to safeguard all that time and effort. With FS14 I can't do that the way I want to.
Summarising:
1. Raise the limit of maximum number of equipment you can buy SIGNIFICANTLY! To 500 or so. So I can actually make some game PROGRESS again, which now I don't feel I can. Only five days after I bought the game I reached the 'Garage Full' stage.
2. Please just fix this #@$%&! getting stuck EVERYWHERE on EVERYTHING bug/unfinished code. It's about time wouldn't you agree? We've waited for it MORE than long enough. And give us a GoTo function.
3. Restore the functions of the small slide-out map, please make a reorderable vehicles list and provide better UI layout options.
4. Oh... and bring back the manual 'Save' option please as it exists in FS14. It IS very useful to have that function. Even better. Give us the possibility to save the game to a file on the device that can be loaded again and can be backed up.
5. Almost forgot. Please fix this 'Honk for collection' function with the harvesters. It is VERY erratic and doesn't work properly WAY too often.
So currently my verdict has to stand at: 'Close, but no cigar.' Please make me want to offer you that cigar.